Σελίδες

Friday, 31 October 2014

According to a U.N. report, an estimated 15,000 fighters from around the world have left their homes to join extremist groups operating in Iraq and Syria. It adds that actual numbers could be even higher...

The report, which was submitted to the U.N. Security Council by a panel that monitors al Qaeda and the Taliban, states that foreign fighters are joining the Islamic State and other extremist groups on "an unprecedented scale." They are coming mainly from the Middle East, Western Europe and North Africa, although there are also some Asians and a smaller number of Americans.

Thursday, 30 October 2014

From the Official Website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation (Statements and speeches):

Considering the ultimatum issued
by Kiev and some Western capitals that elections not be held in the
self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, it would be
logical to remind the following.In accordance with the Minsk
agreements reached in September this year by representatives of the
President of Ukraine and the self-defence forces of southeastern Ukraine
with the mediation of Russia and the OSCE, these elections can be held
between 19 October and 3 November of this year.

Wednesday, 29 October 2014

UN, 29 October 2014 – United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today deplored the planned holding by armed rebel groups in eastern Ukraine of their own “elections” on 2 November, calling the potential polls a “breach of the constitution and national law.”

“These ‘elections’ will seriously undermine the Minsk Protocol and Memorandum, which need to be urgently implemented in full,” Mr. Ban said in a statement issued by his spokesperson in New York.

Tuesday, 28 October 2014

An agreement regarding the route for the deployment of Peshmerga
fighters to the besieged Syrian Kurdish town of Kobane has been reached
and troops are on the verge of departing, officials from the Kurdistan
Regional Government (KRG) told Anadolu Agency on Oct. 28.

The
spokesman of the KRG’s Peshmerga Ministry said discussions had dragged
on because of negotiations regarding the heavy weaponry that the troops
from Arbil will bring to assist Kurdish fighters in Kobane in their
struggle against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Monday, 27 October 2014

German
government considers those elections an important step towards
stability, whereas an Italian politician and journalist Giulietto Chiesa
believes that stability in Ukraine is still very far away ...MOSCOW, October 27. /TASS/. Ukraine’s newly-elected parliament is
unlikely to restore Ukraine to stability, Italian politician and
journalist, Giulietto Chiesa, has told TASS.“Stability is still very far away. Apparently, after the elections
the prevailing presence of right-wing parties inside the Verkhovna Rada
will be used as a pretext for an offensive (against Donetsk and Luhansk
regions),” Chiesa said.

Friday, 24 October 2014

WASHINGTON, October 24 – The United States takes the reports about chlorine attacks against Iraqi police officers by the Islamic State (IS) extremists very seriously, US Secretary of State John Kerry said Friday.

"I'm not in a position to confirm it, but we take these allegations very, very seriously. In particularly, the most recent allegations about the use of chlorine as a chemical weapon," Kerry said at a joint press conference with South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se.

Wednesday, 22 October 2014

Four former employees of the US security company Blackwater have been
convicted of almost every charge related to the shootings of more than
30 unarmed Iraqi civilians in Baghdad seven years ago.The jury in Washington found Nicholas Slatten guilty of first-degree
murder, and the three other ex-security guards - Paul Slough, Evan
Liberty and Dustin Heard - were convicted on Wednesday of committing
multiple counts of voluntary manslaughter at a Baghdad traffic circle in
2007.

Sunday, 19 October 2014

UN, 19 October 2014 – A week after a major conference in Cairo on the
reconstruction of war-ravaged Gaza, and in the wake of recent visits to
Gaza by the Palestinian Prime Minister, Rami Hamdallah and United
Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, the key UN agency on the ground
there has begun scaling up its response to meet critical needs of people
in the Strip.
In a press release, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)
announced today that it is now focusing on providing food, water and
sanitation services to over 40,000 displaced people in 18 of its
installations, psycho-social support particularly for children, cash
grants to the homeless for rent, as well as urgent repairs to 118 UNRWA
installations, so that we can bring our services to full capacity.

Friday, 17 October 2014

Two senior Israeli government ministers lashed out at US Secretary of State John Kerry on Oct. 17 over remarks he made linking the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the growth of Islamic extremism.

"I respect John Kerry and his efforts but he keeps breaking new records in lack of understanding of our region and the essence of our disputes," Communications Minister Gilad Erdan said in an interview with Israeli public radio.

Thursday, 16 October 2014

UN, 16 October 2014 – In three rounds of voting the United Nations
General Assembly today elected Angola, Malaysia, New Zealand, Spain and
Venezuela to serve as non-permanent members on the Security Council for
two-year terms beginning on 1 January 2015.
The new members will serve on the Council until 31 December 2016.
Angola Malaysia, Venezuela and New Zealand were elected in the
first vote. The Assembly then held two rounds of restricted balloting to
elect Spain to fill the remaining seat on the Council open to the
Western European and Other States Group. Turkey was the other contender
for that seat.

Wednesday, 15 October 2014

Over 82 million of China’s residents are surviving on a daily income of $1 despite China's meteoric economic growth and rising export volumes, the Strait Time reports.

“The poverty-stricken population not only suffer from low income but also face various difficulties in getting drinking water, roads, electricity, education, medical care and loans,” said aChinese official Zheng Wenkai, cited by South China Morning Post.

According to the news source, poverty remains a ever present burden for most of the Chinese population. China's rural residents average 2,300 yuan ($368) a year or about $1 a day.

Monday, 13 October 2014

E. VENIZELOS: It is a great pleasure to welcome to Athens, to the
Foreign Ministry, my dear old friend and colleague Ioannis Kasoulides,
the Foreign Minister of the Republic of Cyprus.

With Mr.
Kasoulides we had the opportunity for a one-on-one meeting, followed by a
meeting of the delegations under our direction. Thus, in two different
phases we discussed in detailed depth the situation that has taken shape
in Cyprus following the Turkish initiative, in violation of
international law, of the declaration, through a NAVTEX, of the carrying
out of exploration in maritime zones of the Republic of Cyprus, in a
region in which the Republic of Cyprus exercises its national sovereign
rights; that is, in a region of the Cypriot exclusive economic zone and
continental shelf.

Sunday, 12 October 2014

UN, 12 October 2014 – On the next stop of his tour of North Africa, Secretary-General
Ban Ki-moon in Egypt today at a conference on the reconstruction of
Gaza urged all parties to last summer's war to address the root causes
of the protracted conflict to prevent the “cycle of building and
destroying” from becoming a ritual.
“We are here to stand with the people of Gaza who have endured a terrible summer of suffering,” said Mr. Ban in his remarks
to the Cairo Conference on Gaza attended by the President of the State
of Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas, and several foreign ministers including of
Egypt, and Norway.

Saturday, 11 October 2014

Syrian rebel forces fighting the government of President Bashar Assad
overran a military intelligence base on the Golan Heights that served as
a joint Russian-Syrian forward post for information-gathering on
Israel.

In a four-minute video clip which was posted on the
Internet by the rebels, Free Syrian Army fighters are seen in a building
in Quneitra, just near the boundary between Syria and the
Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.

Friday, 10 October 2014

WASHINGTON - Turkey has agreed to support the training and equipping of
the moderate opposition in Syria, the US State Department said on
Friday, saying a US military team would visit Ankara next week to
discuss the matter.

"Turkey has agreed to support train-and-equip
efforts for the moderate Syrian opposition," spokeswoman Marie Harf
told reporters in describing a visit to Turkey by the two senior US
officials responsible for building a coalition to fight the Islamic
State militant group in Syria and Iraq.

Thursday, 9 October 2014

Greece
has accused Turkey of escalating tensions around Cyprus and undermining
negotiations on settlement of the Cyprus issue, the Greek Foreign
Ministry said in a Thursday statement.

"Unfortunately, at the
center ... is Turkey’s refusal to see that the Republic of Cyprus is an
independent and sovereign state, a member of the UN and the European
Union, that exercises sovereignty and sovereign rights, in accordance
with international law.

Wednesday, 8 October 2014

At least 18 people have been killed in pro-Kurdish protests in southeast Turkey, the Anadulo news agency reported on Wednesday. The
protesters were angry at Ankara’s lack of action to protect Kurdish
population of the Syrian border town of Kobane from the Islamic State of
Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Eight of the deaths came in Turkey’s
main Kurdish city of Diyarbakir where the most intense rioting took
place overnight Tuesday to Wednesday, a local security official told
AFP.

Tuesday, 7 October 2014

Turkey has asked the United States to step up air strikes to keep
Islamic State militants (ISIS/ISIL) from seizing a key Syrian Kurdish border town, a
senior Turkish official was quoted as saying on Tuesday.

"Our
government and our related institutions have emphasized to US officials
the necessity of immediately ramping up air bombardment in a more active
and efficient way," Deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan said,
according to comments published on the website of the television channel
AHaber.

Monday, 6 October 2014

UN, 6 October 2014 – The parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity began meeting today as a new United Nations report on the status of biodiversity warned that much more efficient use of land, water, energy and materials are needed to meet globally-agreed targets by 2020.

“Bold and innovative action is urgently required if governments are to meet the globally-agreed Strategic Plan for Biodiversity and its Aichi Targets by 2020,” the Montreal-based Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) said referring to the 20 biodiversity goals agreed upon in 2010 in the Japanese city of Nagoya in Aichi prefecture.

Friday, 3 October 2014

Scientists from St. Petersburg Polytechnic University have developed a monitor system to follow space junk.

The
system is a set of monitoring meters intended for a spaceship to ensure
its safety if established on board, Rector of the St. Petersburg
university Andrei Rudskoi told TASS on Thursday.

The space
litter monitoring project aroused interest at the Russian Space Agency
(Roscosmos). Chief of the Roscosmos agency Oleg Ostapenko has promised
support to St. Petersburg Polytechnic University to enable it to test
the litter monitoring meters on the orbit.

Thursday, 2 October 2014

A comprehensive motion authorizing the government to deploy the Turkish
army into Iraq and Syria and to allow the deployment of foreign troops
on Turkish soil was approved Oct. 2 in Parliament, providing the
necessary legality for Turkey’s potential contribution to the
international coalition’s efforts to destroy jihadists.

The motion, based on Article 92 of the Turkish Constitution, received 298 votes in favor and 98 against.

Wednesday, 1 October 2014

UN, 1 October 2014 – The joint United Nations mission to oversee the
destruction of Syria’s stockpiles and production facilities has
completed its mission and been shut down.
The Joint Mission of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and the UN (OPCW-UN) drew to a close yesterday.
“The work of the Joint Mission has been vital to the success of
international efforts to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons programme,” said OPCW Director-General, Ahmet Üzümcü.